Roses in December
by ROGfan
Summary: The Doctor remembers.  Spoilers herein for everything past Doomsday.
1. Shellshocked

A/N: The title and summary are from a quote by J. M. Barrie

* * *

He can't grieve for her, she's not dead; he can't hold her, much as he aches to, because she's not here; but he can, and _does_, still love her. And although he knows that she's not here, it doesn't get any easier because his mind is forever playing tricks on him and making him think for a second that it's all not true and that when he opens his eyes/returns to the console room/defeats the latest monster (and any other number of increasingly unhinged, desperate bargains he's made with himself) she'll be there smiling up at him again as if she'd never left.

Of course, it doesn't work like that.

His nightmares, for so long filled with the echoing screams of a dying planet, have changed and now instead of the images of his long-dead people burning themselves into the back of his eyelids, it's her. He can't shake that last image he has of her - wind-whipped hair falling into her eyes as she listens to him stuff up telling her the one thing in their relationship he had absolutely needed to get right.

_He didn't say it back_, and although he's (almost) certain that she knows - already knows he feels for her what she feels for him, and more - he carries with him that extra little piece of guilt over the fact that he has managed, yet again, to break her heart. Yet in some of his bitterest, darkest moods he wonders if that's not exactly unfair, since she's managed – not by choice, he grudgingly concedes, but still – to break his.

_She promised me "for ever"._

He's still resentful, even now – months after it happened – of how the universe managed to play _yet another _cosmic joke on him and not even allow him time to process the fact that a universe separates him from his love and that as far as he can see there's no way to change that. He can't remember much about the incident with Donna and the Racnoss, and he's grateful. Predictably, though, the one thing he _can_ remember about the whole thing is the most painful- the time when his mind flashed back to when he still had Rose.


	2. New Hope

He breaks, tired all of a sudden of pretending that everything's still fine-and-dandy when it is obvious even to him that he is simply _not coping_, shortly after making sure Donna is safe back at her parents' house; for what seems like for ever (it's not,ofcourse, but it bloody well _feels_ like it, from his point of view) he is a total, utter mess and the tears flow faster and more thickly than he would have thought credible fewer than three regenerations ago.

(The fact that, three regenerations ago, this would never have been an issue is something he refuses to contemplate; it's just another self-fulfilling argument and another one of those is the last thing he needs at the minute.)

Past the disbelieving stage more quickly than he wants to have been, he shouts a **lot** at this point – well, shouting is the wrong word; he _screams_ at the TARDIS, at the universe, at anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be within hearing range – and lashes out with slaps and kicks and punches at whichever parts of the TARDIS he can reach, as if blaming the ship for his losing Rose.

The part of his mind that's still rational knows that it isn't the TARDIS' fault, of course it isn't, but at the moment he is far from rational and he is so far from caring about that fact that it almost surprises him to think so.

It's a long, long time before he feels sane enough, or good enough about himself, to want to leave the time vortex. Even longer before he can even let himself think of going anywhere near Earth. At the moment, it's anathema to him – he wants no reminder of what it is he's lost, and he knows that that's all he'd be getting if he went back there any time soon. So he roams time and space, a little like hehad done straight after the Time War when he was alone (really alone) for the first time in all his lives.

He knows that the destruction of his planet and his people is supposed to be a grief that's unsurpassable; he wishes someone would tell this to his brain, his soul, his hearts. The pain he's suffered since that god-forsaken Norwegian beach is stronger than anything he can remember; and he loads this guilt on to the growing pile – that a slip of a girl has meant more to him in the short time he was with her than people he's known for lifetimes.

And it's while he's in this happy frame of mind that Martha Jones runs into him at Royal Hope Hospital.


	3. Remember, Martha is not Adeola

He wonders how long it's going to take him to convince Martha that the kiss he gave her in that hospital on the moon was just the "genetic transfer" he'd said it was. He suspects it might be later rather than sooner, and supposes it's his own fault for kissing her lips instead of her cheek or forehead or somewhere else on her face, but he was in a rush at the time and didn't have time to think. That, plus the fact that memories of the last time he'd been in an Earth hospital with Rose are never far from his conscious mind (OK, in Rose's case it was the cat-nuns on New Earth - but he figures the principle's the same; a hospital is a hospital is a hospital) colouring everything he thinks and does and says and feels, and he's in a wholly foul frame of mind. What's more, since he crossed the threshold of Royal Hope Hospital, that mood is darkening by the minute.

He flinches when Martha mentions her cousin Adeola and Canary Wharf, and although he knows enough of human customs to say he's sorry, he doesn't really mean it. Adeola is part of the reason why he no longer has his love; he used to have so much mercy about this sort of thing, but not now. Not any more.

He curses himself for not realising that going anywhere near Earth in a time-period anywhere near what happened at Canary Wharf would produce unpleasant memories; had he not already become a distinct part of the linear timeline he would happily have disappeared anyway and left them to it. Rose "died" because of these people and it's not something that's endeared them to him – any of them.

Particularly Martha Jones, if he's honest, or at least on some levels. She looks so much like her cousin it's uncanny – he wonders idly if their mothers were identical twins or something, that might explain it. His mind winces every time he looks at her because that resemblance grates upon his memory and brings back full force the thoughts and images and feelings surrounding that little white room in the Torchwood Institute and the "ghost shift". He wonders if it's possible for him to hate anyone more than he still hates Yvonne Hartman. He knows he should pity Yvonne, especially since she ended up cybernised (and the thought of _that _brings on other nightmares from other places – Rose [again, a maid's uniform and zeppelins), but he can't find it in himself to do so.

He just wants it all to _stop_, to be able to think of Rose without his hearts contracting in his chest with fear and pity and utter, utter longing. Just wants it to _stop_. For a little while.

_Please?_


End file.
